by John Shirley
Dedicated to:
. . . those who die over and over again, only to be regenerated thanks to Hyperion. That is: it’s dedicated to the fans of the Borderlands games.
Special thanks to the folks at Gearbox, like Anthony Burch, but don’t blame them if you don’t like the book. Blame the hobo I paid to write it for me (but only if you don’t like it). If you do like it, I did it alone, without a hobo. That’s the ticket.
Also, thanks to Paula Guran for agenting, and special thanks to my wife, Micky, who’s helping me edit.
Come to think of it—credit Micky for it, if you like the book.
PROLOGUE
Marcus Tells a Tale to a Captive Audience
In the settlement of Fyrestone on the planet Pandora . . .
Looking at the breached door, Marcus muttered, “I’m a damned skag-dropping of a fool.” He’d known there were flaws in the security for his new munitions warehouse in Fyrestone. A pair of Hyperion Guardian robots were on order, to keep watch over the place—but they hadn’t been delivered yet. He was installing alarms . . . soon. But so far there were only a couple of heavy locks on the thick double doors to the rusted steel building. He’d been pretty cagey about the warehouse and the goods in it, telling people around the settlement it was filled with junk parts. Apparently the cover story hadn’t worked. He was going to have to shoot someone.
Looking at the shattered remains of the locks in the gathering twilight, Marcus shook his head and slapped a fresh clip into his Jakobs Ornery Tidal Wave, a shotgun that could tear a person into three pieces and two people into seven.
He pressed the Tidal Wave’s gun butt against his hip with his right hand, reached out with his left, and eased the door open—saw with surprise the lights were on inside. Amateurs. Should’ve used night-vision goggles for a major burglary.
Then he heard the burglars giggling. It was high-pitched, too. Psycho Midgets maybe?
Marcus slipped inside, as quietly as possible, thinking that once he’d disposed of these scum, he’d stick their heads on poles outside.
Then he saw them. They were trying to pry open a crate with a screwdriver. They didn’t have the activator that opened the crates, the way Vault Hunters did . . . and one other thing stood out . . .
They were children.
The burglars, it seemed, were four small boys and one even smaller girl. Not one could’ve been over ten years old. They were raggedly dressed, scuffed, a bit bloodied; fingers black with filth scrabbling ineffectually at the container. Marcus reckoned they must be the gang of half-starved orphans who’d taken refuge in Fyrestone the last few months.
From what he’d heard, the parents of these grubby waifs and most of their siblings had been murdered by the Marauders out in the wastelands. A few of the kids had gotten away, running wildly through the night toward the distant lights of the settlement. Marcus figured they’d found precious little charity around Fyrestone. It just wasn’t that friendly a place. So the orphans had turned into a little band of scavenging, snarling thieves, eating swiped canned food and road-killed skag meat. These kids had the makings of Crazed Marauders themselves.
He raised the Tidal Wave to his shoulder and aimed. Two shots should take them down. Messy . . . but it would do the job.
A kid with thatchy blond hair turned big eyes toward him, gaping. “Oh shit, it’s Marcus! We’re bloodsplash!”
The children stared at him in frozen terror—seeing a big man with a trimmed black beard, a rather sinister smile, a big gun in his hand pointed right at them.
“Hey, mister!” the little girl piped up. A freckled little creature, her red hair matted in no definite shape, her face stained with what was probably skag blood. “We didn’t get nothin’ outta here yet! I mean, we wasn’t really . . . ! We was . . . I was . . . we found the locks broken . . .”
“Don’t be stupid, Larna,” said a taller, bonily thin boy with long black hair and brooding eyes. “He’s not gonna believe that. Sure we broke your locks, Mr. Marcus! We was just hoping for food in here.”
“Ha!” Marcus said. “These are munitions crates, anyone can see that. You were looking for something to steal—and sell!”
“Sure,” said the tall kid. “So we could have money—so we can eat.” He shrugged resignedly. “People leave money in them boxes all over town . . . but you gotta have that Vault Hunter gear to open it up and get the cash. And even then you might get shot for takin’ it. So we scratch for what we can.”
Marcus started to speak but the boy interrupted, his voice a grim monotone: “Listen, if you kill us—could you let me step up close enough so you can take my head clean off? My folks was killed by one of them guns and . . . it cut my mom’s in half but . . .” He shook his head. “She didn’t die for a while after that. I had to run off and hide before . . .” He shrugged again.
The deadness in the boy’s eyes testified to the truth of that story.
Marcus growled with irritation at himself. He already knew he wasn’t likely to kill these kids, or sell them into slavery. He hated having moments of weakness. A man had to keep up a steel-hard front to survive on Pandora. On his vending machine recordings, he threatened customers with assassination if they tried to buy weapons from someone else. But he didn’t really mean it. For one thing, it was too much damn trouble to kill them for that. For another, he had a monopoly on retail weapon sales over half the planet anyhow. Still . . . he had to project that “fuck with me and die” thing. And that meant making a real example out of some poor fool from time to time.
But then again—he did like telling stories to kids. It went back to his origins on the homeworld when his uncles would tell stories around the fire; partly true stories about the nuclear war and the cannibal tribes and the New Order that arose after that; and about the star drive discovery, and the coming of the great Interstellar Corporations, Hyperion and Dahl and the others . . .
Telling stories made him feel like he was back home with family.
Okay, he told himself, so that’s your excuse for being weak with these brats. Little thieving crazy weasels you ought to kill.
He sighed. “If I had any sense, you little brats would be exterminated like Tunnel Rats. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take you somewheres I have a fire going—”
“You’re gonna burn us to death?” the little blond boy squeaked.
“No, no, no, we’re gonna sit at it and have some barbecue.”
“Oh. Who you going to barbecue first? I’m too skinny to—”
“Kid will you shut up and listen? I’ve got some imported homeworld water buffalo meat, we’ll all eat that—and I’ve got some canned almost-veggies you can have, too.”
They looked at him in disbelief, as if wondering if he was going to drug them and sell them into slavery.
Marcus sighed and lowered his shotgun. “Not everybody on this planet’s a psycho! I’m not one.” He cleared his throat, reflecting on the matter. “Unless, you know, I’m in an especially bad mood.” He pointed a finger at them. “Or unless you screw with me again! You guys break into anything of mine again, steal anything of mine, then you’ll see me turn psycho! If you’re lucky, I’ll just sell your asses into slavery! The pirates off the Trash Coast will use you as bait for skag fights!”
The older boy looked at Marcus skeptically. “You really going to feed us? And not to something else?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve already got a Claptrap turning the stuff on a spit back at the compound. I was going to invite Zed but, damn, he’s getting fat anyway. You’ll just have to trust me, or I’ll blow your skinny little legs off! Now . . . back away from that weapons crate, keep your hands where I can see ’em, and head real slow toward this door.” He stepped out of the way, keeping the
shotgun in plain sight. “You want to eat, wait just outside. Keep your backs turned to the door, cause I haven’t checked you for weapons yet. No quick moves.”
They obeyed, walking nervously past him, and grouped outside while he stepped out, closed the door, and used an instant sealant from his backpack to lock the place up for a while. He’d have to cut it open, later, put on new locks, set up the Guardian robots. What a pain in the ass. But it was his fault for being overconfident about security.
Marcus paused, looked the raggedy group of kids over, shaking his head. “Natural selection should’ve selected your skinny asses out by now. But . . . maybe if you’ve survived this long you deserve a little more livin’.” He narrowed his eyes and snarled, “All right, I know you’ve got some weapons. Drop ’em on the ground! Now!”
Metal clunked and clinked as the kids emptied their pockets onto the ground. Their weapons were all handmade shivs and clubs; there was a sling with a spiked ball in it, one hand grenade that looked so rusted it was probably just for show, and a pair of knuckle dusters stolen off some dead thug.
“No firearms?” he asked. “I’m gonna have my home-bot search you, so don’t get cute . . . tell me now if you’ve got any.”
Larna nodded toward the tall skinny kid. “Skeros here had a shotgun with two rounds. Took it off a dead Psycho Midget. Used it to save me from a skag. Then he sold it for food. That was four, five days ago.”
“Ah. Okay, turn around and march. Nobody try to run. I’ve got something in store for you . . .”
• • •
An hour and a half later, they were all sitting around the open barbecue pit in Marcus’s compound; little meat remained on the iron spit, and what there was dripped hot fat to sizzle in the flames. Metal walls reflected the firelight; the walls were slapped-together scraps from abandoned buildings, enclosing a square space about an acre across. At each upper corner of the walls was an auto-turret, a modified Scorpio, aimed outward, scanning back and forth for intruders. Random metal was piled in an ungainly hulk against the farther wall. It was made up of junked, broken weapons and pieces of robots—many of the robot parts were busted-up Claptraps, which were being found in great numbers lately. There were rumors that Handsome Jack was destroying the Claptraps, for reasons he kept to himself.
Marcus was sitting on a bench, digesting his dinner, basking in the warmth of the fire, his back to the shack he used to repair weapons; the kids were ranged around the fire facing him, sitting quite still, hugging their knees. They watched him warily, firelight dancing on their faces, glittering in their eyes. The orphans seemed sleepy from the big meal, but curious, too, as they watched his every move. Now and then they looked at the shotgun, leaning on the bench within Marcus’s reach.
“So . . .” Marcus took a pull on a flask of hard liquor and went on, “every so often I got to have an audience. For stories, see. It’s . . . how I am, I guess. It comes from when I was a kid myself, and . . . well . . . some people are born storytellers and they don’t feel right unless they can do it. I can’t make a living at it . . . never heard of anyone making much of a living telling stories . . . so I sell guns, I pick up customers at the spaceport in my bus, that’s how I make my scratch. All you got to do is listen to me—that’ll pay for your supper. And maybe breakfast, too. But don’t get cocky—I can still knock you cold and sell you to the slavers if you piss me off. Am I clear?”
“I think so,” Larna said. “But you talk kinda funny.”
“Funny? Okay, so I got an accent. Dig the scythid droppings out of your ears, and I’ll tell you a story . . . all true!” He sniffed. “Well . . . mostly all true . . . lots of it . . . true, quite true . . . in many respects . . . except for here and there . . . but . . . all true! It’s about the Vault Hunter, Mordecai, and his winged friend Bloodwing, and it’s about a strange little killer of a woman named Daphne, and it’s about a settlement way up north, out on the fringes of the fringes . . . a hellhole of a town called Gunsight. And it’s about how a skinny little guy, not much bigger than you . . . Mordecai, I mean . . . it’s about how he took on a small army—no, two armies! And he hadda fight for his life against a weapon so big you couldn’t see the end of it from the beginning of it. Hard mission, even though he’s just about the best shot this planet has. Now just listen . . .
“Mordecai, in recent years, has taken up a bad habit—drinking.” Marcus took another pull on his own flask of liquor. He looked at the flask and cleared his throat. “I mean, drinking too much. He was ‘on the wagon’ when he met Daphne, trying not to drink—but boy-howdy could she nag, dat woman. She wanted to run their part of Pandora, see. But ol’ Mordecai just wanted to take a mission now and then and have some fun and shoot some moron sons of bitches and target practice by knocking down a few dozen rakks and the like after breakfast. What his girl wanted, dat wasn’t what Mordecai wants. All Mordecai wants out of life, he likes to say, is ‘everything this freaking universe owes me’—for him, that means getting the best gun around and all the cash he can spend. But . . . conquering territory? Naw!
“Follow me? Well one day, Daphne nagged him too much and he got riled and got to drinking . . . At that time he was living not so far from Sanctuary—that’s that place Roland’s kinda got organized with his new Crimson Raiders outfit. And this place of Mordecai’s was called . . . now hold on, what the Angel’s Inferno was it called . . . oh yeah . . .”
Oh yeah, I remember now—Mordecai’s place was called “Mordecai’s Place.”
It was in a rugged area, semi-mountainous, up in the kinda-damn-cold north, not so far from the settlement of Sanctuary, and not so near, either. Not so far from that crazy little bitch Tina’s place . . . and not so near to that, neither . . .
Now, kids, picture Mordecai—kind of a small man . . . he prefers to say compact and wiry . . . and in fact his girlfriend, Daphne, who was fast beginning to act like a wife, was only two inches taller than he was. More often than not, Mordecai wears a close-fitting leather helmet, and goggles; a kind of rooster tail of dreadlocks stick out the back of his helmet; leather gloves, leather fighting suit . . . never far from a weapon . . . and behind those goggles his eyes are sharp as lasers . . . And he’s looking out at Pandora from way high up in his eyrie . . . a tower, is what it is, on a stony crag . . .
• • •
It was a brisk, windless morning in the high northlands.
Bottle in hand, Mordecai was standing pensively at the sniping rail of the tower he’d taken over as his headquarters. Also leaning against the rail was a modified Jakobs sniper rifle, muzzle still smoking from his having snapped several rakks out of the sky. Mordecai had fired seven shots to kill six rakks . . . and Daphne had been watching. Her jeer rang in his ears still: “Ha! Took you two shots for that one!”
She’d said it as she sashayed back into the tower bedroom. “The Mordecai I knew wouldn’t need two shots to take down a rakk! But the drunk Mordecai . . . Oh yeah.”
Mordecai snorted. He wasn’t drunk, yet. That would come later. But maybe he’d unsteadied his aim just a smidge with the first bottle of Zed’s Cornfed Whiskey.
He heard a squawk, turned to see Bloodwing, his vulturine semi-reptilian pet, leather wings flapping as she settled down on the railing. She cocked her head and Mordecai thought he saw a familiar look of disapproval. Maybe because Bloodwing was now in her female mode; her species shifted between male, female, and neuter, according to some mysterious inner biological clock.
Mordecai growled, “Don’t tell me you think I’m drinking too much, too!”
Bloodwing shrugged her leather wings in a noncommittal way.
“I know what that means, Bloodwing. If Daphne says it, it must be true, that right? You’ve totally gone sweet on Daphne. It’s those Bloodcookies she’s been feeding you. You’re getting fat on them.”
Bloodwing squawked in protest.
“Oh, don’t give me that.” Mordecai took a swig of Zed’s Cornfed and grimaced, angrily tossed the bottle over the l
edge, watched it fall spinning hundreds of meters till it smashed into the rocks. “Zed should never have branched off into booze. Tastes like medicine.” And in fact it was stupid to be drinking in the morning. Not a good habit. Wait till at least midafternoon. Or okay, maybe noon. Or . . .
It was time, he decided, past time, for a paying mission. He needed to blow off steam with a really vicious, bad odds, near-suicide assignment. He was antsy and drinking too much and not getting along with Daphne. But he didn’t want the mission that Daphne had in mind—her own long-term plan to carve a small kingdom out of this corner of Pandora. The scheme wouldn’t even pay a profit for a while—if ever. She wanted him to take control of the surrounding territory, within a klick of Sanctuary. There was a lot of traffic in and out of Sanctuary—they could ship goods there, too. They could hire some men, make this a kind of fiefdom; charge a toll for caravans traveling through, levy fees for mining, hire yet more men, really build the place up. That was her vision. “We’ll be rich and safe.” A local king and queen . . . or maybe they’d be no better than a couple of annoying, heavily armed toll takers.
It all sounded like a big pain in the ass to him. Who wanted to be in charge of a bunch of hired guns who might snap a shot into you the moment your back was turned? It’s not like they were trustworthy like Roland. And Roland was busy organizing his Crimson Raiders in Sanctuary—planning to stand up to Handsome Jack and Hyperion.
“Women,” Mordecai muttered to Bloodwing, “are nesters.”
Bloodwing cocked her head and gave him a “what else?” kind of look.
Mordecai scowled up at the place in the sky where the moon should’ve been—the moon was there, but it was almost stamped out, half hidden by the big metal H-shape of Handsome Jack’s orbiting base, a gigantic artificial complex of control and weaponry and surveillance. It looked like a humungous branding iron descending on the world, as if Handsome Jack were going to sear his H . . . for Handsome and Hyperion . . . into the living hide of Pandora.